For much of the month of June, and for much of the last half of May, the people of southeast Saskatchewan have been doing whatever they can to stay cool. This includes the students, teachers and staff at the schools in the region.  

Dealing with the heat has been a challenge for many, but what has it been like in the schools? Some students in the South East Cornerstone Public School Division do have the luxury of some air conditioning, according to the division’s Director of Education, Keith Keating. 

“Approximately half of our schools within the division have air conditioning and the other half don’t,” Keating explained. However, while a school may have air conditioning, it doesn’t necessarily mean everything is working properly. “In terms of the ones that do, there were a couple of systems that were experiencing some difficulty earlier on in the year. They’re at a point now where they’re at least functioning, or partly functioning, in those particular schools.” 

With half of the schools having air conditioning, it means a not-so-insignificant number of students have to take their daily classes without air conditioning on days the temperatures have been 30° or hotter. To help with this, there are a number of things the schools have been doing to help deal with the heat. 

“Many schools have fans; they try to rotate students through air-conditioned part of buildings, so we have some buildings who have that, have different classrooms or different parts that are air-conditioned but not the whole thing,” Keating said. Some teachers will also take out the classes to the outdoors, and have the students learn in the fresh air while sitting in the shade.  

The schools will also do things like running air exchangers in the early morning and late at night, when the air temperature outside is at its coolest, to help draw the cool air into the building to keep things very tolerable. This doesn’t always work, though, as seen in the last heat wave. 

“It wasn’t cooling down as much at nighttime as it has been in the last little bit,” Keating added.  

While the numbers haven’t been looked at yet for this year, when it comes to heatwaves, attendance hasn’t been an issue in the past. When the school year ends, they will go over the data at that time.